American Ilia Malinin competes during the men's figure skating short program at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday. (AP photo)

MILAN — Ilia Malinin keeps teasing fans at the Milan Cortina Olympics by submitting program plans that have the American figure skating star attempting the quad axel, a 4 1/2-revolution jump so difficult nobody but him has ever landed it in competition.

Yet through two programs in the gold medal-winning team event and his individual short program Tuesday night, the “Quad God” has yet to attempt the hardest quadruple jump of all, opting instead for the safer triple axel everyone else is doing.

“My lazy part of me,” Malinin said with a smirk, “just forgetting to change the planned elements.”

Or maybe Malinin is saving it for his grand finale.

He has a five-point lead over Japan’s Yuma Kagiyama and France’s Adam Siao Him Fa going into the free skate, a margin so big that it seems almost insurmountable, and one that gives him some wiggle room should he attempt the quad axel and fail.

The plan Malinin has submitted for tonight includes it — naturally — part of what would be a record-tying seven quads in all.

“I’m hoping that I’ll feel good enough to do it,” Malinin said, more seriously. “But of course I always prioritize health and safety. So I really want to put myself in the right mindset where I’ll feel really confident to go into it.”

The best laid plans

Planned program content is just that: a plan. Skaters often deviate from it depending upon how they feel.

It may be they had a hard time with an element in practice and change it. Or, they might make a mistake in the midst of their routine — say, messing up the first jump on a combination pass — and they are forced to change their program on the fly.

What makes the quad axel so difficult is that the axel is the only one of figure skating’s six primary jumps that starts facing forward, giving it an extra half revolution. In fact, the jump is so difficult even elite skaters struggle with the triple version of it.

“I never thought I’d see anybody do a quadruple axel,” admitted 1984 Olympic champion Scott Hamilton. “Not in my lifetime.”

Indeed, most people thought it was impossible.

Then Malinin proved it wasn’t.

In September 2022, during the off-the-radar U.S. International Figure Skating Classic, he stunned the sport by setting down a near-perfect version of the quad axel as part of his winning free skate. Malinin was just 17 at the time.

How does he do it? By spinning at about 340 revolutions per minute, or about as fast as a ceiling fan set to high.

“Seeing what Ilia has done in the last three years has been mind-boggling,” 1994 Olympic champion Kristi Yamaguchi said. “I know several of us — Brian Boitano, Scott Hamilton — we’ve talked, saying, ‘We have never imagined we would be alive to see a quad axel performed and landed in competition,’ and here comes Ilia, just whipping it off like it’s nothing.'”

It’s decidedly something. Whereas the triple axel has a base value of 8.0 points, the quad has a base of 12.5. Throw in the additional points Malinin could earn for the degree of execution and the quad axel gives him a massive scoring advantage.

At last year’s world championships in Boston, he landed it along with each of the other five quad jumps, propelling him to his second straight title with the second-largest margin of victory in its 130-year history.

So why would he ever take it out? Besides the inherent risk, the rest of Malinin’s programs are so difficult he doesn’t really need it. Kagiyama has a mere four quads planned for his free skate Friday night. So does Siao Him Fa.

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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics